YC-funded companies are known to be large-scale consumers of free and open source software. They are able to leverage the competitive advantage provided by this digital infrastructure to build successful, high valuation businesses. Some of those companies have gone on to make great contributions to the Open Source community themselves.

Would YC ever consider setting up a fund for the builders and maintainers of the infrastructure that your companies depend upon?

How do you feel about non-profit startups developing pure Open Source software and services in exchange for donations, in the interests of bettering the ecosystem itself? Could a nascent Mozilla be a YC nonprofit?

I was suggested by few YC Alums that YC will not accept a startup if the founders are not working full time on it.

Question: In my case I am working full time because it's helping me fund my startup and It's actually helping me grow it due to connection to my peers (I am M.D from India working on a Health Startup). Is this a bad sign ?

I simply do not have the resources (and enough revenue) to quit my job Yet. But I am dedicated 200 % towards my startup and the vision. And I spend most of my time (outside of work) on my startup.

What's the best way to pick between two ideas when you like one idea better but the other is more feasible given your skill set?

>>>>>>>>>>>

We're two founders working on products for people of color.

We have two ideas we want to work: 1) a networking type idea 2) a media and entertainment idea.

We love both these ideas deeply, we've committed most of our time to idea 1 bc we can make an MVP for it but we want to work on #2 bc it will have more promise given market trends and we like the idea more.

The problem with #2 is that it requires a lots of capital to make video content and we don't have domain expertise in film production.

As a result we're torn as to what we should write about on the YC app. Our app focuses on the 1st idea but we mention the 2nd idea plenty of times. We would love your thoughts.

Thank you Michael for taking the time to be accessible to the community.

I want to be a farmer. I want to treat the farm like a startup. At which point in the application process can I try to convince you that you need a farmer in your portfolio? Also, when and where can I go into details to describe how it would be different from today's conventional operations?

Seeing some of the recent startups that have come out of YC and learning about what they're working on; I can't imagine how they'd scale to a billion dollar business. Question: Is this a signal that YC is now investing in companies that don't have such lucrative paths? If so, how does YC justify such a decision to their partners.

I've once heard PG say that if you are an international startup, an important question is who will stay with the company back in your home country in your absence during the YC period. My founder and I would obviously both love to be there and we don't have a good answer for that. Any tips?

Hi Michael, thanks for the AMA. When you evaluate an early stage biotech startup, what would you say is the most important thing that you look for? - clinically validated products, or a solid long term business model?

With Trump picking Scott Gottlieb to be the next FDA commissioner, the FDA approval process is expected to get more lenient. Would you say that YC (or investors in general) would be open to take more risks with high tech startups that do not have a clinically validated product as of now?

One more question - Given that the FDA process takes a lot of time, quite a few biotech companies often get acquired or merged with bigger companies that can afford to do so, without ever having actually gotten their product out on the market. Would you say that you look at the company's potential return in that sense when you evaluate startups? I'm not entirely sure if this question makes sense, so let me know if you want me to clarify!

What do you think of teams that are working part-time (e.g. while in full time education/employment) on an idea with decent traction, but who are waiting for external validation (such as YC or other investment) before going full-time on it? Do you take it as a sign of low commitment?

Can you provide some info on how does YC support hardware startups? More specifically, what is a good stage to apply?

We are working on building a demo-quality HW prototype, with the ETA of ~6months. That means we will not be focused on growth, but on tech development. Should we wait until we have a working system and apply to YC when we are ready to scale and grow it (this is our current thought).

I haven't worked on the idea/MVP I applied with last time, instead working on scaling my existing business. Last time I didn't get an interview.

Is there a point in applying again with the same idea? The only thing that would have changed is that my other business, listed as an accomplishment, is now 5 times as successful. (In the 350k range vs 70k.)

I was also thinking of applying with that business, but it's not really a YC kind of company. Would YC fund an e-commerce company with no particularly unique approach, just selling on 3P marketplaces, and ambitions of growing to maybe pharmapacks level (100 million in yearly revenue, around the biggest such company)?

Hi Michael, I'm wondering if you can comment on how you think the current political comment will affect the startup scene?

For example, I remember reading (sorry, no source) that YC is starting to hold events in Canada in order to welcome those who may not be able to come to the U.S. due to the current administration's executive orders. It looks like this may push startups out of the United States.

I'm hoping you can comment on this action, and other actions that might affect the startups in America and around the world, including, but not limited to actions involving education, public funding, military spending.

As international founders (Egypt), our team is a bit worried about the whole visa situation. I heard the interviews are generally held 2 weeks after the invitation. Do you help with obtaining a visa for the interview and is 2 weeks enough time to go through the whole visa process?

How would you characterize the effectiveness of the scaling that YC has done over the last few years? Meaning, the increase in partners coupled with broadening of the scope of markets, not to mention YC Research.

It's midnight here in india and i just noticed this session. I really want to know if there's any quick tip regarding international founders such as from india. I've been in touch with other Indian YC alums and have been getting feedback and suggestions for my YC application. I really am in doubt about how should i go with the application, i mean what exactly YC partners look for in the application the very first time, considering and international founder?

If a startup has taken a lot of dilution before applying for YC, is YC flexible enough to not dilute the founders but come up with a structure that makes them get 7% through a secondary sale or some other tactic which makes sense for that specific situation?

I have mostly come to the conclusion that the answer is no because YC likes to do stuff in a standard way and there is no room of flexibility w.r.t that aspect of the program terms. Just wanted to confirm that though.

considering the 1% rule, do you think our culture of media consumption is in our nature or something we've created? is it a trend? do you think there will be more room in the future for companies that serve amateur producers? can we create more producers?

sorry for so many question marks. it's a single question- poorly formed. :)

Where do you fall on the spectrum of looking for high probability wins vs black swan hunting? To put it another way, how high of a failure percentage would you accept so long as it maximized total cohort value?

E.g. would you accept see it as a loss if you funded the best single startup of the decade and all other YC funded companies failed? How about a 90% failture rate, but huge winners bringing a bigger return than YC has historically had? How do you balance the desire for a good hit rate vs a good total return?

Does YC have any evolving thesis as it comes to particular technologies, such as Blockchain or Quantum technologies? For example, are there attempts to achieve internal consensus on the use of Ethereum?

(Full disclosure: I applied with an Ethereum wallet one year ago and got an interview but was told that the path to market wasn't clear enough. The project was ultimately absorbed into a different incubator. )

My question is: How can we make a better environment for discovering cures/vaccines? Can we create a almost like a "YC" for research of biological sciences.

Although, I don't know much about this area, I feel there needs to be a better way to allow the most intelligent people have the resources they need to discover cures/vaccines etc, with no external barriers. Thank you.

Out of all the companies that YC has funded, which one do you consider to be the best? How about the second best?

By best I mean one which has had the most positive impact on people's life, where positive impact is some function of just two variables - the number of people affected and the intensity of that affect.

How does YC feel about funding seed stage projects that have to test market before actual growth? I'm currently CTO of a new distributed entertainment platform, and the investors we're talking to all want us to grow now. Conservatively, we feel if we seek growth now we'll be in some minima of quality that is too similar to competing products and not actually different enough to be sustainably disruptive. We ideally want a year of experiments before we commit to attempting explosive growth. Thoughts?

PS. We are raktor.org, working on telepresence participatory theatre, which we believe is the future of entertainment. Currently in VR, though whether it's VR or not is not relevant to our long term goals of being an Uber-for-theatre-performers.

Q: What are some of the top weighing attributes you're looking at for companies applying today, and how heavy (1-10 scale) would you say they count towards an acceptance decision. I'm envisioning a "credit score" for application.

With the continued concentration of many tech positions to a handful of tech hubs in the country, are you doing anything to improve the economic conditions of the Midwest US? Or are you primarily investing in the coastal areas alone?

Personality type question. For a two founder (technical & business) startup it would be important for at least one of them to be conscientious and the other to be creative. For example you might have a genius but unruly technology lead, tempered by a focused product and business partner, or you might have a visionary and rule breaking CEO tempered by a hard working diligent technical workhorse. Both appear to be a successful combinations.

Which pairings of personality type and role works better in your experience for YC applications?

What are the current in-between steps for YC? What normally happens after application submitted but before acceptance e.g. in person interviews, video interviews? What other steps are involved and what's the reason for them?

Hey Michael, with getting rid of the Fellowship, and moving to the MOOC, does that mean YC will look at some of the early stage companies the Fellowship would have looked at thus expanding their scope, or is that the purpose of the MOOC?

Considering the current evolution of automation and the global forecast of high unemployment rates, that will be a problem for the whole economy (with Bill Gates suggesting a tax on robots), what are your thoughts about education? We currently educate kids based on a system that assumes the current jobs are going to be there in 15-20 years and for the rest of their lifes. Can startups and technology help in improving education considering the future world considering the current pace of automation in most fields?

Question: Is there are more stringent criteria for accepting international founders and companies, focused on their local markets?

The reason I am asking this is because most of the companies from India in the latest batch, seem to have a lot of traction and/or significant amount of funding before being accepted into YC. Most looks like good candidates for Series A.

Vs other US based founders and startups in the current and previous batches

One factor when evaluating startups is how long it will take to get everything ready. Some can launch in a month, but some depend on breakthroughs or environment shifts that will take a decade to happen.

Is there a Goldilocks zone that lends itself to better outcomes? How far into the future is too far?

We applied for Y Combinator Winter 2017. We were not selected for the in-person interview.The company has faced lots of restructuring after that. Some founders left and new people came. Product changed but the vision is still the same.Do you think it will have the negative effect on our application ?

I know a lot of VC funds really don't favor Services and Solutions companies really well - and of course prefer SaaS due to obvious reasons. What does YC think about Services related companies? Would it be a waste of time to apply?

If founders have a product already deployed but have many future plans for it, do you recommend they focus on explaining what the product is currently, or what the plans are for the future state of the product? (for the question "What are you going to make?")

I don't have a co-founder at this moment. But I am working on an MVP that make sense more in India than here in the USA. I am from India but live in Bay area. Can you suggest what is the best way to build this product into reality?

same here in Germany on windows this morning.. also had to disable QUIC.

Funnily I switched to Microsoft Edge for a short while, but have once again realized why its unusable. After about 1-2 minutes using it, the entire browser became unresponsive for about 60 seconds. Afterwards I couldnt press sign-in on YouTube because an invisible IFrame from the OneNote Web Clipper Extension was overlaying it. Nobody seems to be testing those either :)

Direct fiber connection to Level 3 (Columbus, Ohio) here at work. Had to disable QUIC as I am getting the same errors as well when trying to access Google. Using local DNS, not sure what upstream DNS we are using though.

I've had problems with QUIC in various networks (corp, home) mainly in Singapore for more than a year. Until the point I disable QUIC as one of the first steps when I encounter GMail connectivity problems from Chrome/Chromium on a fresh machine.

I find it odd that QUIC is enabled by default when it apparently has poor fallback capabilities to "non-QUIC" mode.

I'm going to hijack this thread to describe something weird that's happened to me yesterday w/ Google: just connected on my usual BT (UK) wifi, and when I opened google.com, Safari complained about an invalid SSL certificate: it was self-signed, with expiration in 2111. After a dozen refreshes, everything started to work, with the correct certificate.

Anybody seen anything like that? Is it possible that a corrupted packet could appear as a self-signed certificate? Did some MITM screw up?

My wife and I moved from the US to London back in July for the sake of adventure and it has been great. In fact, I'm answering this from Sorrento next to my wife who has already fallen asleep from a day hiking around Pompeii. I highly recommend London as a city both to travel from and to explore in its is right.

I'd be happy to hop on a video chat to give you more in-depth advice, but the short answer to your question is that yes, there are a number of companies tho are hiring and willing to sponsor visas. GoCardless, the company I work for does and the engineering team there is pretty great.

There are also a couple recruiters I know who are ethical, knowledgeable, and communicative.

As far as your specific background, am I correct in thinking that you doing network/telecom programming right now and you are looking to do more web/mobile?

Hi Will. I don't really have advice for you, but there's a very useful subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut . The people there are really helpful and know a lot about the various immigration procedures.

I was a (I'd call it hard-core) procrastinator. I still am a procrastinator, but I've come (relatively) quite a long way.

I have never been a lazy person in terms of physical activity. I like all kinds of sportive activities - hiking, biking, football (soccer), swimming, working out, etc. But over years I had become very lazy for mental gym, a master of procrastination, developing a massive fear of intellectual activity. A few years passed, and I became so tired of myself not doing a useful cognitive work. I hated it - if you ever been a mentally-active person even in a childhood and in later years you realize you've become slacker, then you will hate yourself for not doing useful things. It's a good thing if it bothers you - it should bother you.

What started my recovery from procrastination was reading. It was like going back to roots - I was an avid reader as a child, so, it really helped me to kick-start. At this point, I guess everyone has some kind of useful hobby, or habit, as a mental activity and if it has gone rusty, they should clean that up and start rotating the gears. BTW, I should also mention the "Learning How To Learn" course (MOOC on Coursera by Barbara Oakley). It helped me a lot too, as I like learning by listening and it motivated me to set a daily goals & complete them. Essentially, it taught me to follow a lesson/lecture again. Maybe this course (it's like "brain 101" or "how a brain works and how to use it efficiently") will not do the same for everyone, but is't not about this exact course - it's about to start learning again, you choose your own one.

All in all, IMHO, procrastination is a massive fear of mental activity (rather than lazyness) and it's so harmful as almost all other fears & one should face it to get rid of it - again, like other fears, it frightens you as long as you avoid facing it. After the face-off, it's just downhill and you feel relieved. (And procrastination can never be overcomed enough and one should never let languor overtake them, IMO.)

I was a terrible student in K-12 and then I college before I dropped out. Starting probably in middle school, I didn't do homework at home. I would do it in a panic the class before. Then in high school, I'd barely do it at all. I did well on tests so I suppose that's how I got by at all.

In college, I got a part time job which I started taking more shifts at and stopped going to classes altogether because I was anxious about doing classwork.

After dropping out, I went full time self studying 3D art and animation through DigitalTutors (now Pluralsight). I found myself more interested in programming so traded that for Pluralsight and Safari Books Online.

Both 3D art and programming were immensely more interesting to me than Physics (which I was studying before) which I think influenced my work ethic.

I got a programming job which forced me to learn as an additional full time job.

I'm a relatively successful professional now, but I still suffer from devastating procrastination. I put off launching an engineering blog for my company for almost a year because there was a step I avoided which eventually I did and it took 15 mins.

The things which have been effective for me are the pomodoro technique. I use kanbanflow for this which also has a kanban board. I don't use this for everything, but I rely on it when I'm unmotivated or the task is really important.

I also became more effective when I switched managers and made it a point to ask them to bug me about things. I tend to take on a lot of side projects and get them 80% done. Having a accountability (peer and/or manager) whom you actually care about impressing (or disappointing) is important, even if they're not in tech or at your company.

The biggest thing would be to shift from future mentality to now mentality. Be interested in the process, not the results. When you visualize or anticipate the results, it robs required energy from the present to perform the action that leads to those results...

Basically you've got to rewire yourself to derive satisfaction from doing, not resting in anticipation of a future outlook. A future which never actually matches the visualization exactly, because if it did, you'd be a gotdamn oracle.

Sometimes, there are actually reasons for procrastination. I've mentioned my disability a few times here, and now I'm going to again: as a result of it, I tend to avoid situations that make me uncomfortable, ones that I've not been in before, and just about anything that involves paperwork or having to read something and really comprehend it.

As an example of the situations I avoid, right now I'm meant to get in touch with my doctor and ask for a referral to an organization who can help me with my disability. I've been at this point for the last 25 days - because I don't know if I talk to the office administrator, the nurse, or the doctor.

That's it. That's the only reason, and like omarchowdhury says, it's a case of "just do it." But - and this is the killer - I have a really powerful compulsion to avoid it. It's similar to the compulsion not to climb a scaffold for those of us scared of heights, a strong driving compulsion that is difficult to overcome.

Similarly, I've got a stack of books the length of my arm, all waiting to be read, but I haven't touched them in probably five years. I used to read a book every few days, sometimes two a day if they were short enough, but I haven't (re)developed the rule set that allows me to get back into that.

A friend and I are developing a project (and game), and I haven't done anything on that in two or three weeks. Longer, if I'm honest with myself. Again, that same compulsion drives me to avoid working on it.

I have an email waiting to be sent. It's almost ready, I just need to read it to be sure it's correct, re-write a small bit of it, and then I can send it. Three weeks.

Instead, I just sit here, reading short but pointless crap on the internet, watching videos on YouTube, going off to work for a couple of hours a day, which brings me to my next point - that if I'm doing something for someone else, I can usually fly right through it with ease.

I have no explanation for this, just that it can be a symptom of my disability, and I have no understanding on how to approach it or beat it, so I will be watching this thread with some interest.

edit:

Think I should point out that when I reply on here, quite often I'll forget to check and see if anybody's replied to me. When I do remember, it's often while I'm out and I'll plan to do it later, but then I don't remember. Not strictly a procrastination problem, but it falls roughly in line with it.

I don't know if I'm a "real" procrastinator but I am definitely a "P" on the MBTI scale. This means I usually do things at the last minute. I can rarely manage to get interested in a task (especially a boring one) until just before the deadline. Also, I can't seem to do any productive work if I don't have a huge workload. (As an example, after putting off stuff all week long I'm now hauling ass to get everything done by the WE - despite posting on HN at the same time - and I'm fairly confident I'll get most of it done)

The flip side for me is that I'm very driven by deadlines: I hate to be late (or more specifically, too late). So, to overcome my ingrained habits, I split up tasks and set intermediate deadlines for each subtask, not too far in the future. If I have a real, hard deadline I'll impose myself an arbitrary deadline the day before; this way I may slip my own deadline by a few hours, but I'll definitely make the real deadline. I may also sit on tasks for a few days (or weeks), until the accumulated feeling of urgency from all those chores to be done is enough to get me moving.

It's more coping than overcoming, but I find it useful in practice, at least for my natural inclination. Taking an MBTI course really helped as well, it helped me understand why I behaved in certain ways and identify my coping mechanisms for what they are - I've behaved this way for a long time, but I always felt kind of guilty for having to use tactics to get anything done.

For me, the biggest problem is the start of the (boring) activity. Once I'm already in it, I can work for hours -- just the first step.

So my solution is simple. I say to myself: "I'm not gonna work on that boring thing, I'll just have a look at it." This relieves the pressure and allows me to get started. Next thing is: "Ok, so I'll just do this one little thing." Three hours later: "Shit, it's done.".

Also it helped me to write down activities I want to stop, e.g. "No HN before 5pm; No news before 5pm".

And the last thing is to remove all possible distractions. Put your phone out of your visual field, block sites, etc.

Sit on the couch and get feeling "good" and guilty about not doing a given task.

Then, promise yourself that if you get up and just get it started (assemble the materials, or scrape the dishes, or define the variables...) you will have pushed the project forward and earned the right to sit back down.

That's surprisingly easy to do. Once your are started though, there will be no way you will want to sit back down. You have got this thing on the run. You are wining!

I KNOW it sounds silly. It works for me, and it works for others I've talked to. It's your life. Good luck.

For me it was ADHD; the stress of a deadline is stimulating which increases my focus. That's a shitty way to live though so getting it treated helped a lot.

I see another comment where it was anxiety.

If you only procrastinate certain things, you just might find those activities aversive. You can adress that, to a certain degree, by scheduling. Do X amount of the work you hate followed immediately by Y amount of work you like; it's a simple way of rewarding yourself for doing what you don't like. If all of your work is work you hate, prepare yourself for a different job if at all possible.

Some people procrastinate just because they are poorly organized; any system (GtD seems to be popular) can fix a lot of this.

Other times procrastination can just be a form of self-sabotage (there are many reasons for doing this; you think you don't deserve success; you are avoiding the greater responsibility that will come with success &c.). "I left it to the last-minute" is a simple excuse for doing a mediocre job and lets you avoid self-reflection for why you are sabotaging yourself.

There's probably lots of other reasons for procrastination, but the one pattern for myself and friends who had procrastination persist into adulthood was that it was a symptom, and while treating the symptom can help in the short term, treating the problem is a better long-term fix.

Procrastination doesn`t start at your work. I`m sure there are other areas in your life that could be better. Start establishing healthy habits. It will affect every part of your life and thereby reduce procrastination.

One important point is your level of energy and a fresh mind.

* Stand up earlier

* Decrease your coffee consumption

* Get used to cold showers

* Eat healthy

* Do sports

* Stop using social media

* Don't watch TV or series (make it a rule to only watch with others)

* Don't listen to music all the time. Enjoy music. If you definitely need it, listen to some without vocals. Vocals are more distracting and so you are less focused and so you get less stuff done and so you are less motivated and BOOM, back on HN.

I've had a lot of success recently forcing myself to do something "boring" in the morning, while I still have willpower remaining, avoiding high-stimulation activities (internet/apps/junk news etc.) until later.

After getting better at beating procrastination, the main problem has been is the feeling that my brain is totally dead and "heavy" after working on mentally-taxing things for hours - napping seems to help with this, but I can't always just nap whenever I want.

My procrastination is basically an anxiety problem. How do I deal with it now and stay somewhat sane?

Most importantly I do a lot of working on my self-awareness, and recognizing when I'm not in control.

Next would be medication so I can actually do something when I hit that realization. I'm fine without it until the stress hits and then it's too late. I've considered that maybe it's a placebo effect thing, but at this point I don't really care. I don't have horrible side effects or feel weird or anything I can't live with.

I have to be extremely honest about myself all the time. If I'm behind, I say so. If I'm stressed I say so. It rarely bites me and it keeps me from having to scramble to cover a lie or exaggeration. Anxiety feeds on anxiety.

Then there's all that agile bullcrap. I try to think in 1 or 2 week sprints depending on the project. Occasionally I look up to see what my bigger goals are and make sure my small ones make progress towards them.

I have to work in a supportive team, so we keep each other on track and in perspective. We have to be able to cross-delegate so we don't get bogged down. It's way more fun to share in success and failure with friends.

I get killed by long-term deadlines. Give me 6 months and I'll turn a shell script into a new language project. So I ignore the "cure world hunger" stuff and just make sure I'm making progress all the time. That way I enjoy my success rather than constantly feeling like I'll never make utopia. I focus on MVP, then MVP + 1, and so on. I never fall in love with my own work or some piece of tech, so I'm happy to scrap it when it stops being useful.

Now I get a lot done. I have a reputation for getting a lot done in short periods of time. But I still always have to combat the feeling that I'm not moving fast enough and I'm letting people down. Talking with people who care about you (because they're friends, your spouse, or you're paying them to help) is the only way to really deal with that.

I guess the common themes here are to be self-aware, communicate, and keep moving forward in as small iterations as is reasonable.

I am not a psychologist, so take the next 5 points with a HUGE grain of salt.

1. Ask yourself if you are suppressing an impulse to perform tasks, or waiting the impulse out, or simply not experiencing the impulse at all. Ask yourself what dots need to be connected to actually lead you to performing the task. Some people procrastinate tasks that require nearly zero effort... often at great personal cost. If you notice yourself doing this, take some time to reflect(non-judgmentally) on your behavior-- its profoundness, irrationality, and what could be gained if it were changed. Think about the day-to-day reasons that a 5-minute task gets drawn out over 2 months. Rephrase your question to "am I accidentally thinking procrastination is helpful?" Procrastination may be a mood regulation technique; rather than thinking of it as "avoiding a boring task", ask if it is "the pleasurable experience of defying or hiding from an 'undesirable' task". When viewed through that lens, procrastination is a maladaptive coping mechanism vaguely like binge-eating or self-harm. The next questions become "why would I think procrastination is helpful?" and "why would I feel the need to cope?" Hypothesize your reasons-- the self-fulfilling prophesy of underachievement. The avoidance of engagement with real life. The assertion of control. What else? Be with these ideas for a while, and ask what is best for you.

2. (rephrasing oldmancoyote's comment) 1/10 rule: for 1 minute of work, you earn 10 minutes of "break." Seriously, get 10 minutes of break guilt-free for 1 minute of work. It's a great deal.

3. Present and patient. Practice mindfulness meditation to help with your emotional state and train your ability to be "present" in your current task. (see omarchowdhury's comment) Being able to be present without thinking about the future is difficult, but it is paradoxically important for your future. Also realize that by being fully patient and present in this menial task, you can sometimes be in a self-healing, meditative state.

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load (feel free to assert that cognitive load does not affect work avoidance) You may be experiencing a self-regulation failure due to high cognitive load. "Abnormal" brain chemistry like ADHD, bipolar, depression, etc., ... dysphoria sometimes due to a sedentary or unhealthy lifestyle, and social or personal problems will eventually sap your emotional energy and cause you to revert to coping mechanisms(see point 1). Invest in that emotional energy. Also blood sugar/insulin

When I was working on something I thought I had to work on, I used an app called Freedom to block the web. When I dropped the thing I thought I had to work on, and started working on something I really wanted to work on, then I didn't need external help.

As a supplementary activity, I'd strongly suggest going to various meetups in the city that meet on a regular basis, either weekly or monthly.

Say you know Rails, go to a Rails meetup. Say you enjoy politics and tech, find a Civic Tech meetup. In NYC, I'm certain there are tons of excellent tech related meetups that provide opportunities to socialize with the community and get to know what's going on. The added benefit is that some of the hosts of the meetups are looking for employees, or some of the members belong to companies that are looking for people.

You might say, "I don't like networking." That's fine, not every tech event is a networking event. Civic Tech meetups for example focus on working on projects in your spare time that benefit citizens. During a meetup you can sit in on a project meeting and potentially contribute if you're interested. So it's a natural way to collaborate with others on a shared goal and to learn. Very different than going to a bar and having to strike up a conversation with another person.

I don't view going to meetups as a direct method to gaining a job, but rather, increasing the likelihood of serendipity. Maybe you'll go one day, and a employee of a company announces they are actively looking for someone. Or maybe you make friends with someone knows someone who is looking for someone. Or maybe you come up with an idea of an interesting side project that could be an excellent way of proving your chops to a potential employer. The idea is that you already know what you know, that applying is hard and hugely competitive, so why not try a bit more of a circuitous route by going through humans first?

And I say this having got my first job in NYC through a friend, my first co-founder through a friend, my first startup through a friend, my first YC interview because of exceptional co-founders who were way smarter than me but I met through friends.. basically it didn't matter that I didn't go to an Ivy League or prestigious program, all that mattered was putting in a ton of effort to build my skills (like yourself) alongside connecting directly with people.

- Build a MVP of an application you would find useful, try to cover it with unit tests and modern day practices. I think having something on the table will greatly improve your chances.- Find a job somewhere else. I've never lived in the US but at least all my life I had to move to another city, and even to another continent to get the job I've wanted, that wanted me. The city I've lived most of my life I have no chances of getting a job: there are no jobs in my area there.

I know that NY is a great city for a developer, but the life cost and everything tells me that it's a "high level" city, the one you go after you had previous success. Places where life cost is low, there are many students and businesses at early stages are great.

I also suggest you to work for a startup. Perhaps one with many problems and issues at early stage which you would probably need to pull out more than 40h/week, because that will make you improve. I did that at the beginning of my career and it completely changed my life: I moved to a first world country, I've got married, I can make money etc. Those hard experiences make us way stronger. Of course, only do that if your current life allows you to do so: having kids or even trying to maintain a good relationship with others will be hard.

The stigma around bootcamps definitely sucks, and I am sorry that you are falling victim to this.

I hired someone out of a bootcamp who turned out to be the best hire I have ever made in my entire 10 year career. Initially I wasn't even aware that this person had been in a bootcamp. I proceeded to interview purely on abilities and grilled 'em on some questions about DOM, JS, CSS etc... (the candidate was applying to be on our frontend team).

First, do not let this weigh you down. 50% of anything you get in life is not whether or not you have the qualifications for it -- but if you believe you're gonna get it. It applies to asking someone out on a date, telling a risky joke, or trying to find a job. It's great you're aware of the stigma associated with bootcamps, but don't let it define who you are.

Second, and this is primarily for the other people in this thread: don't judge a book by it's cover. The aforementioned best hire I've ever made in my life was an individual fresh out of a bootcamp who, prior to that, was essentially a jarhead in the Marine corps. If I was starting something new today and needed someone technical on my team they'd be the first person I would go to. This individual started as a frontend engineer and - almost overnight - was sharing 50% of the workload with myself at every level of the stack, all the way down to configuring kafka/cassandra clusters and building internal microservices.

Finally -- sell your narrative. Ignoring the obvious baseline qualifications a technical person needs, most people are not looking for a technical genius who went to Carnegie Mellon and aced every single class. They're looking for pragmatic engineers who are quick on their feet and can dive deep to the root of an issue to engineer a straightforward solution to the actual problem. Demonstrate this ability and it will go a long way. You say that you're making it pretty far down the path so your cover letters are working. You might just need to change your narrative to flip the minds of those who keep considering you a junior engineer. People want you to help them solve problems -- they want to work with people they can trust -- show them that.

Keep doing what you are doing -- also please send me your resume to mwhalen@farmlogs.com because you sound like a rad person.

Have you considered applying for jobs in the boonies of NYC? NJ, Long Island, Upstate? If you are the sort of young person living in NYC I am imagining you to be, the prospect of commuting to the burbs is horror-inducing to you. It is to most of your peers, with whom you are competing; you will have a leg up if you are willing to commute to Poughkeepsie for a year.

Switching to a new industry can be tough... and often landing your first job is the hardest part. As such, I would NOT be choosy at this stage. There's a ton of companies out there that don't have customer-facing software, but desperately need developers. These positions may not be exciting (e.g. improve intranet app, clean up reports, etc) but they're always there, the competition for them is generally lower, and they serve as fantastic proving-grounds for newcomers.

I don't think you need to go back to school. Perhaps the market is flooded with bootcamp grads and now it's how do you differentiate yourself. Better portfolio site, stronger Github presence with good readmes. And like thegandhi says, sometimes it's out of your control. Some companies really just want fresh grads with 3.8 GPAs.

Also, take a week off from job hunting or even thinking about the internet. Go out camping, be out in nature, and reset.

It sounds like your approach is already very proactive and productive. Don't underestimate the value of persistence. I spent a year teaching myself to code. I was able to get a foot in the door through an internship at a NYC agency. This came after several months of fruitless applications and one freelance gig that ended because I didn't know enough about WordPress. I was dog walking in the meantime. Now I am a software engineer. Truly entry-level positions are (in my experience) hard to find for a new web developer. Once you have your first professional experience, internship or junior position, you will receive more interest from prospective employers. Unfortunately, the lack of entry level positions means that you have to have patience and persistence in the beginning. Believe in yourself. Trust that you made the right commitment. Keep at it. I did little things like buying clothes that I was going to wear when I finally had my first web dev job. I didn't wear those clothes until the first day of my internship. By investing in that future, even in silly, little ways, it helped me to believe that future would be a reality.

If you're in NYC, check out the BoroughJS meetups. I don't know if this will help you find a job but I think it will help you to feel part of the JavaScript community. You are part of that community if you choose to be, even if you don't have a job. People there will (in my experience) take you seriously regardless.

Finally, a word on bootcamps. I've interviewed several candidates who graduated from bootcamps. Some are great. Others are not. I think the attitude generally is that a bootcamp listed on a resume isn't an indication of anything. If this is one of the primary ways you define yourself, I would deemphasize it. Instead, emphasize code you've written (in the form of Github repos, Gists, CodePens, live sites, etc.) and communicate that you think like a programmer, even if you don't have a lot of experience. These are the two things I focus on when interviewing junior candidates.

Remove bootcamp from your resume. Its not for resumes, its primarily for gaining skills. No one will be impressed by Bootcamp. Give list of your projects but don't mention where you developed them. Just say, Self starter/learner. Bootcamp is a negative indicator, imho.

Most of the junior roles,in tech companies, are filled with new grads or rather resumes from colleges. I would suggest going to career fairs and conferences/meetups. Many recruiters scout here for junior positions. Also, do not be disappointed with rejection. You just need one acceptance :). There are many companies out there. Apply like a bit. Good luck.

I hire seniors and high-potential juniors. Many mid-levels are mid-level because they don't have what it takes to become a senior. Those high-potential junior might or might not have it, but this doesn't really matter. If they don't have it, they become the war horses that are very familiar with the stack, and that do most of the implementation work, while the seniors do more the architectural kind of work, and take care of the juniors.

Not hiring juniors that have little experience, but seem to be very intelligent and eager to work, is one of the biggest mistakes you can do in tech hiring.

>Applied to two jobs here in NY, taking my time with cover letters, following up where appropriate, researching the companies, etc.

That's the wrong approach, IMO. The goal of job applications isn't to make the best impression possible, but rather to find companies that are interested in talking to junior engineers.

The right approach is something like make/find a spreadsheet with 500+ tech companies in NY and send out something like 20 applications per day. If you're efficient about things, you can totally send out an application in <3 minutes, so it'll take no more than an hour of grinding per day.

Save the research and application quality for when you've got a warm lead.

>the bootcamp on my resum isn't a strong guarantor of quality

Drop it from the resume and just put in your freelance work and independent projects, IMO.

I would suggest building something small,a website that integrates with Google Maps Api, Twilio, Lob whatever so you can at least show something on your resume when applying.

I was in your position 3 years ago, although not from a bootcamp but came from another country without any plausible experience / projects to show for, so I built a website and its administrative area and talked a lot about it on the interview, how I built it, the problems I encountered and so on. That might help a little bit, asking for NYC salary ( I guess around $60-$70k) withouth anything to show for is a hard decision to take for any employer out there.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I see a resume like yours is that do you have any real experience or just a line claiming your did the bootcamp? Depending in what you learned, do you have a portfolio of released apps and software that you can proudly list? Also have a blog. Not everyone needs these, but given you're starting out new, you need to do all you can to get more credibility and these two things can put you a notch above most other people applying for the same job and at least get you interviews. Once you get there, then it's all you and not so much your portfolio or blog.

talk to a recruiter like teksystems. find out who works for the NY office and send them an introductory email. I had the exact same issue a while ago and this was the solution, I had a job < 2 weeks after first contact. take a short contract gig to beef up your resume. be selective with the opportunities the recruiter brings you, learn your market value

Put your work experience (freelance) on your resume.Use your social network to do a good word for you.Keep going or practice acting, anxiety always give off a negative signal.Don't limit yourself geographically (NY).If nothing works, apply for internship or move to northern europe.

When not submitting resumes, try contributing to some widely used github projects that interest you. There are recruiters out there that specifically look at commit history for potential applicants, plus it'll help up your skill level.

This may not be financially feasible for you but offer to be an intern for a few months and if accepted, then prove to the potential employers that you are indispensable and then they could hire you on as a full time employee.

I think you're doing so much right, and I'm sorry you haven't yet achieved the results you're after. In the long run, you will. In the meantime, focus on the process and not the results. Be mindful of the results, but focus on what you can control - the process (your time and your actions). Interviewing is a set of many skills - you get better over time. You're better at it than when you started because you have more experience interviewing.

You need some information on what's not working. There's a kind of funnel:

Phone screen -> at home task/project -> onsite -> offer

Sometimes there are 2 or more phone screens. Sometimes the take home project is after the onsite. Sometimes there are multiple onsite interview. But write out a general funnel in a spreadsheet and track how you do with each company. Each company will be a row. You want to see how far to the right you are getting. You have lots of data at this point - populate the spreadsheet with it.

Why? To see where you're dropping off, and to see how you do with different kinds of roles, industries, and companies in terms of size. Are you applying to the right jobs? Are you applying within 1-4 weeks after the job is posted (rather than being 1 of 100+ applications in the pile because the posting is 4 months old)? If you aren't getting many phone screens, work on your resume format and wording, cover letters, and your digital persona (LinkedIn, blog, etc). Get honest feedback from people you know, and if you still get the same results, hire someone to improve your resume and help you write a cover letter or two that you can mimic for future applications. If you aren't getting many call backs after a phone screen, work on how you're answering questions (your narrative, behavioral answers, technical answers, describing previous work experience, your tone, etc.). Do practice interviews, and practice your answer to questions. If the process seems to stop after the take home project, practice these types of projects on your own. If you aren't getting offers after onsites, that's where you need to focus.

Especially on the phone screen and in person, when people ask if you have any questions, ask them "Do you have any concerns about my abilities or qualifications that would prevent you from selecting me for this position?" Patterns will emerge. You can address their concerns, but only if you know about them. Help communicate to your interviewer who you are and why you're hirable and will do well at the role. With this knowledge, you'll be able to anticipate these concerns and soften them with other interviewers in the future.

Apply to 5-10 jobs a day. Pick 5 if that's more realistic. 5 a day will get you a lot more feedback on what's working and what isn't than 2 a day. Put a little less work into each one if you have to - they should be personalized and good, but they don't have to be perfect.

Reach out to people who gave you a "not now" answer 4-6 months after that happens. Their needs change all the time, and your skills are constantly improving, so at some point it might work out with one.

Start a technical blog. Talk about your side projects, freelance work (if your client is ok with it), algorithms, useful dev tools - anything technical. Posts don't have to be that long or groundbreaking, but this will help you get a job. Put it on your resume, Github profile, LinkedIn, so people know it exists.

Focus on what's most likely to get you what you want, a full time job. C#, Elm, and Haskell are awesome. Focus on one for a day or two if the company you're interviewing for uses them. If you want to, dabble a little for your own learning and enjoyment, but focus your energy on things that will help lead to a full-time job in the short term. You have a lifetime to explore and learn.

Apply to gaming companies if that's what you're passionate about. Especially ones that need the skills you have most strongly now - web development. Possibly for their marketing teams (because of your former experience with publicity).

1. Map the interview process funnel. Figure out where you're dropping off, and focus on improving that area. 2. Ask people what concerns they have with you, and address them. 3. Apply to 5-10 jobs a day. Whatever the number, pick it and do it. You'll get more data which is essential to improve. 4. Reach out to employers who said "Not now" 4-6 months after because their needs may have changed and your skills have increased. 5. Start a technical blog. 6. Dabble a little less in a wide variety of technologies that aren't as applicable to the roles full time jobs you're applying to. Study them once you have it. 7. Make sure to apply to gaming companies if that's what you're passionate about.

The economy never recovered from 2008 but you are likely also competing with low cost remote talent there just are not that many openings compared to the sheer scale of the numbers of people uncounted and pushed out of the economy.

One time, instead of a cover letter, I built a feature I thought should exist for a product the company I was applying for made. It made a big impression on one of the engineers who eventually voted up or down on my getting hired and I got the job. This was my first full-time tech job.

In a nutshell, where a "sensible" person (engineering manager, engineer, founder..) is involved in front line recruiting (i.e they search, they look at applications), your projects are valuable. I found that in a lot of cases such people have a bias against resumes and will only consider candidates with side projects and a github profile. Mostly these would be early stage startups and some growth stage and large companies that believe in side projects.

Where "recruiters" and "recruiting systems" do front line recruiting, projects don't matter. They're pattern matching resumes and looking for specific things they're told to look for. These would be growth stage startups and large companies, generally companies that hire in volumes and don't have the time or patience to holistically look at candidates.

In short: don't work on projects just to showcase your skills and get hired - hiring is a crap shoot. Work on them because you love working on them, and believe that the world could benefit from them no matter how small.

I don't have a graduate degree, few do in your typical software company that's not a household name. However, employers are very interested in personal projects and want to know what you gained from building them. Professional experience trumps personal projects I would say, but something is better than nothing. Were my personal projects worth it? Yes, without them I probably wouldn't be employed. But it's easy to get lost in them, when sometimes you should move on.

The better strategy is to take a job where you know you can introduce programming into your assignments, even if your job isn't a developer position.

When I first turned pro 17 years ago, my personal portfolio of projects dating back to high school certainly made a difference. 10 years ago when I moved to SV and joined a tech startup, it was my open source contributions that made the difference.

Granted it was a simpler time back then, but I fundamentally believe in the idea of scratching ones own itch and showing the world. Maybe things are saturated now, and you won't stand out as much, but I still think shipping is the ultimate litmus test. If you can ship stuff by yourself that's one of the most powerful signals, and we are very fortunate how easy it is to do that as developers in the modern age.

A lot of startups are aping Google/Facebook and trying to get the absolute smartest engineers they can find by casting a wide net and then aggressively culling so they end up with what they believe are the cream. If you really want to get into one of these then you need to practice algorithms and whiteboarding, you can improve at it. That said, passing a high interview bar says very little about your real value as a programmer. Companies like Google and Facebook have amazing technical knowledge and to work on, but your individual impact will rarely be detectable. And if you're not careful you end up with the golden hand cuffs in the sense that no other companies pay as well, and you won't really learn the hustling skills you need if you ever want to do your own thing.

At some point in the past each of us has had no work experience. Way back when I did not, my personal projects mirrored exactly what I was passionate about, which was data compression. Because I did what I was passionate about I was compelled to be more creative and I produced some very significant work including multiple novel compression techniques and solutions to related algorithmic problems. As with anything else in life chance plays a role as well and I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to get a job with a company that specialized in just that - data compression. But, as the saying goes, chance favors the prepared (mind). Because I followed my passion I was prepared when the opportunity arrived and my personal projects all but ensured that I could get the job. That job was the best experience of my life and allowed me to continue to pursue my passions for another 15 years or so.

You're personal projects, assuming they are really compelling to you and not exclusively to showcase your skill set, will be the strongest assets you have when an opportunity arises to do what you are passionate about. The degree will, likely, be far less important than your body of work.

Follow your passion in your personal projects and you will be positioned well when the opportunity to pursue that same passion professionally presents itself. And you will likely be exceptionally well versed in the subject matter that is important to that employer as well since they will likely be considering you due of your body of work in the exactly the area where they are in need. Good luck.

In college I had no work experience and wasn't going to a good enough school to work where I wanted based on my education alone. I spent two years making games in college, and it was extremely worthwhile. It played a big role in getting my dream job straight out of school, and made me a far better developer than I would have been otherwise. In my experience, it can get you pretty far.

Having impressive side projects puts you ahead of the majority of applicants at most places.

As far as you take em. It's not necessarily that you get to demo your project and will get hired. It might happen, but it's more so the knowledge you acquire along the way. That will serve you well down the line.

I have no degree. Personal projects played a huge part in helping me get jobs at Microsoft and Electronic Arts. Also, I'm very sure I'd be a shit programmer if I hadn't put tens of thousands of hours in at home.

Are they really needed? I think even mediocre engineers are probably so versed in tribal knowledge within they firms that if they say they're overworked they could be moved to other departments because losing an employee is often very expensive. Not only that, unlike other assets, engineers get better over time and become more valuable as they become more expensive. We can move firms, start firms, or move laterality to other industries where our technical skills are valued. A Union protects and supports a population with many more unproductive enginneers than a place without one. We are not like line workers at a steel plant as work is abundant and if a bit of effort is made a good work life balance can be had.

I don't have any specific limitations in mind, but I'd review the idea to see what problems the union is intended to resolve. Unions originally existed to resolve exploitation by manufacturing companies. Is the group of engineers you are considering unionizing being exploited?

My girlfriend recently was forced to join a medical union for a new Medical Assistant job. Her "perks":

* $38k / year (In Seattle, which is about $3/hr above minimum wage)

* 2% salary goes to union dues

* She can't get insurance for the first 3 months

* She was not allowed to negotiate salary, even though she got a 4.0 and a perfect score on her MA test. That means she got the same package as a high-school drop-out who got a 2.3 GPA in MA school and a barely-passing test score.

I, as a non-unioned software engineer:

* Make more than $200k

* Always get health-insurance on day one

* Can easily negotiate not only starting salary, but also raise amounts

* Am compensated on background, instead of an arbitrary "this is your first day, so you make the same as everyone else" leveling system.

* Don't have to pay anyone for the privilege

* Don't have to work with shitty co-workers, because they can be fired without the employer fearing retribution from a big, faceless union.

I used to run wordpress on a digitalocean FreeBSD VPS (and before that I was using some janky Ruby-on-Rails based blog engine), but I eventually grew tired of administering my own server just for a blog.

Now, I pay $2.95/month to have wordpress.com host it. I know it's not a very l33t solution, but the migration was easy and it works well enough. I get ~10 visitors a day, so it really doesn't matter, I suppose. It's mostly just a dumping ground for whatever nonsense pops into my head from time to time: (https://jamesadam.me/).

I came to this setup from previously using WordPress to host all my blogs and then getting tired of dealing with all the security holes, performance bottlenecks and "pharma hacks" that come with it. I did evaluate Jekyll as the blog engine, but the lack of incremental builds was a dealbreaker for me. Hugo has incremental builds from v 0.16 onwards, and it is also super fast, I tested with 5000 posts, builds in a few seconds.

DISCLAIMER: I don't work for Netlify nor am affiliated with them. I find their service to be blazing fast and their support is excellent (even for free tiers), so I made the video a while back for everyone else to use. The co-founders Matt Biilmann and Chris Bach are both super smart and answer questions promptly, Matt also appears to have deep technical knowledge when it comes to caching, security, performance etc.

I recently switched my old VPS-hosted Wordpress blog to a static site generated by Middleman[1] hosted on Github pages[2]. It's been a really nice way to maintain flexibility of design with a huge boost to performance and improved development/writing workflow. I use markdown so I can even write my articles in a markdown editor if I want to.

Wrote my own thing on top of Go's http package. It handles subdomains to a limited extent and will also serve Markdown-formatted blog entries. I run it on a RAM Host KVM-based VPS, which I also use as a shell box and a traffic-forwarding endpoint when I'm on untrusted networks. The RAM Host VPS is a little expensive but after some incredibly frustrating experiences with the idiots at ChicagoVPS, the lack of drama has been well worth it.

I use Octopress and host content on NearlyFreeSpeech.net. I like it over gh-pages because I can run TLS on the root domain and can tweak server headers via .htaccess. On top of that, static hosting at NFS is extremely cheap. 2016 cost me 82 cents. I get maybe 5k visitors/month and use 300mb/month. I cheat on bandwidth by caching at Cloudflare heavily. Without CF my bandwidth would be double (but still pretty cheap!).

Netlify with a GitHub post-update hook to automatically build and deploy when I push. No muss no fuss with free SSL termination provided by letsencrypt and low latency handshakes across the globe. Now if only I had something to write...

On a Hetzner box I have a bunch of other sites on. The code is about 30 lines of Ruby using an existing Postgres/Datamapper-based framework. No need for indexing or search (Google does that), comments (no thanks), just the trivialest of CRUD.

As an employer, I would not turn down any ex-Uber, as long as he or she did not trigger warning lights during the interviews.

Just focus on the technichal side and the money. If you feel good every morning when you wake up to go working for them, then stay.

If not, then that would make a great explanation to your next employer for him/her not to consider you a job hopper. Along the lines of "I quit at Uber because, as you very well know, the culture there was toxic and yours looks much more interesting, blah blah...".

A bunch of people here on HN are / were working for the defense industry. A lot of social networks we ought to trust our private data on were founded by them. I never heared them complaining about not getting a job because they used to violate the privacy rights of humanity or developed the software for drones being used for killing people. Don't be afraid, a lot of companies need mercenaries with broken moral compass.

[Edit] I am working for a company doing "legal spamming" -according to German law. It is kind of useless shit the world would be better off without but the work makes fun and pays the bills. Is Uber hiring in Germany?

I left a Fortune-100 company recently, in part because I wasn't happy with the ethical choices being made by management. I was being asked to implement software that I didn't want to be part of.

I had management assure me that legal had been consulted, and don't worry, they say it's not technically illegal. If the media finds out and we get bad press, PR has already made plans for how they'll respond to it. The responses they gave me really made me lose respect for the managers above that.

Uber is (imho) a morally bankrupt company- even by the standards of companies. The question you should ask yourself isn't whether that will look bad on your resume, but whether you're going to live regretting you were part of it.

I make a bit less money overall now. I also sleep a lot better at night.

I wouldn't worry about what it looks like to leave Uber at the moment. Job hopping is bad when it is unexplained. There's not a tech company in the valley that would fault you for leaving Uber in solidarity or because you didn't realize the extent of the sexism until the story broke. Companies view job hopping as a negative because they worry you'll move on and not stick with them if things get tough. But there's certain varieties of tough that don't fall into that category and the kinds of allegations that are being made against Uber right now (HR complicit in sexual harassment) are at the top of that list of exceptions. I might worry about how it looks to have stayed at Uber, since it might seem like tacit support.

As an aside, the Otto scandal might even be enough reason to want to leave. It's now far less likely that your stock options will ever amount to anything. But leaving for this reason won't be as widely respected, so don't mention it to recruiters.

I was a technical recruiter for startups in SF from 2005 to 2013. I filled hundreds of startup jobs. I wouldn't worry about it. Good engineers are always in demand, so if you're good, you'll be fine. Even if Uber is evil, and Lyft is good, I bet Lyft would hire you.

The thing that will prevent you from being hired, even if you are good, is not owning the fact that you chose to stay at Uber. If you're 100% okay with staying Uber, and you're only worried about perception, I'd say don't about what other people will think. But if you're ashamed to don your Uber hoodie in public and/or you cringe to answer the question "where do you work?", that's harder for you. That may have more to do with how you feel about it, and less to do with what other people will think.

Imagine this... You're the hiring manager for a startup that needs a darn good engineer. Someone applies to your company, and their two previous employers were Ashley Madison and Adult Friend Finder. You've previously interviewed candidates from both companies. If those candidates had been amazing, then you will do anything you can to get that applicant in the door for an interview. If the applicants all bombed, you'll be likely to think the engineering talent at AM and AFF wasn't any good. Neither situation have anything to do with the fact that both companies were adult-oriented websites, which carries some social stigma with it. The AM/AFF applicant might have a tough time getting a job at Eharmony because of their personal values as a Christian-friendly website.

I just left Uber after only six months. It was the best decision I ever made. I'd also been bouncing around the bay - A year at my previous company, merely nine months at the one before that.

My reasons for leaving Uber were simple - My team was toxic. You're not having this problem... or maybe you are and don't realize it. Much of what made it so toxic felt like my failures - Inability to understand the deployment strategy, things moving faster than I could keep up, objectives changing/not well documented.

After a while, I realized that the whole organization was engaged in gaslighting. We were always at war with Eurasia. My manager changed OKRs middle of the quarter. Decisions that I had written agreement on were questioned in the next meeting. Changes were made based on people's personal preferences, without regard for negative effects on others or the moving targets they presented. Coworkers were being cagey about giving advice or plans because they wanted to be 'the hero' and solve problems that I was trying to fix, or they didn't want to admit mistakes, or...

Anyway. I suggest you move on. But it may be worth sticking around for your bonus/stock options. On the other hand - People are going to be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if you're getting out of Uber now. In six months, it will be a real black mark.

Don't quit necessarily, but quit if you feel it's the right thing to do. I've never thought highly of Uber, so having it on your resume is similar to having military experience or working at Amazon to me, it immediately sounds the "probably not a good culture fit" alarm in my head.

I'd personally give a thumbs up to any qualified engineer interviewed with me and mentioned that a big part of the reason he or she left Uber was because of their lack of morals. That takes balls, and so does leaving before the "standard" two year mark, so people who do that are either stupid and ballsy or principled and ballsy - the latter type of person is almost always a great person to work with as long as their principles make sense. There's nothing worse than a principled, ballsy Machiavellian.

So, to reiterate - quit if it really aligns with your principles as a person and you're ready to explain that, stay otherwise. It could also be that in 6 months staying at Uber will be against your principles, making that a great time to jump ship. I think the advantage you have is that since a lot people know Uber is toxic they won't fault you for wanting to get out.

Should you quit? Probably not. Should you be exploring other options? Maybe...and that's mostly orthogonal to being employed at Uber but not entirely. Personally, I don't think it is likely that Uber is going to significantly change its culture based upon its responses (they look like hunkering down and lawyering up).

Now in terms of 'strictly concerned with the impact on my career' that looks like a moral/ethical the-ends-justify-the-means-approach. Here, there are two relevant factors. One is that there is very little certainty regarding how job hopping or staying at Uber will effect your career. The other is that there is a near certainty that people will judge your decision on moral/ethical grounds and that some will judge it as being reflection of a character that is ok with Uber's culture as described by recent events.

When hiring includes consideration of 'cultural fit' time spent at Uber will weigh into those considerations as a risk for companies with an orthogonal culture. Since the longer someone spends in a culture the more likely a person is to become acculturated, the duration of one's 'post-Fowler' employment might be considered when assessing the 'cultural fit' risk/benefit of previous experience at Uber.

I am not pretending that I know what will help or hurt your career: careers vary on an individual basis. I am pretending that what you do or don't do is a choice about who you are. The internet is not going to give you permission for either choice.

I can't see any good reason why you need to switch, your team mates are not 'toxic' and I believe pay is also fine. So why you want to switch? I agree sometime we need to switch for better carrier growth but when going to a new environment, there are chances that you have to adjust. Transitions phase in most cases are difficult. One last advice, don't switch only for money, job is and should be much more than that.

If you don't like the job, the culture, the company, the taste of the free coffee, the commute, the whatever, find a different one. You're fortunate to be employed in a field where job hopping generally does not matter due to high demand.

Aside from the outrage/noise you read on the internet, I don't think is much or any stigma associated with working at any particular company.

One thing I haven't seen people mention is that you're leaving a lot of money on the table by staying less than a year at each of these places where a large part of the compensation is in stock. Why not stick it out for a full year until the cliff, get your options or RSUs and then switch if you must?

People are "tainted" to an extent that future employers/recruiters can be worried that you'll bring Uber culture with you. People can debate how much that happens and if it's valid/fair etc but it does happen.

Uber's brand has become toxic not just on the commercial side but within the tech industry to an extent too and things happen as a result of that.

Do it because it's the right thing to do, not because you're worried about having Uber on your resume.

But since you say you're strictly concerned about the impact on your career, I can tell you that seeing Uber on a resume beyond March 2017 would be an instant red flag for me. I wouldn't bother phone screening that person.

Plenty of companies won't care though, so if you just like money and don't have qualms about your employer's rapidly growing list of unethical activities, then by all means stay.

From the tone of your post, I take it you're young and just starting your career. A few short jobs shouldn't be a red flag at this point in your career, especially if you have a reasonable reason for leaving previous positions (and company culture at Uber certainly qualifies).

As for having a known toxic company on your resume, that should only be a red flag if you were in a position to alter that toxic environment (senior manager, HR roles, etc).

If I were in your shoes, I might be looking to move elsewhere. But, unless you're unhappy, there's no need to hurry.

I think much of the stigma on job hopping comes from it really having a lot of advantages for a worker who is up for it (it gets progressively harder to deal with the first 6 months in a new job the longer you are stably employed and the more specialized you get.)

If I felt I had an external justification to explain a hop and I had doubts about my employer, I would look immediately for a job filtering for ones that I would actually want to keep for 3-4 years. If a new employer accepts you and you actually stay a few years, I would consider a future employer that had an issue with your resume rather odd. While sticking it out at an employer that you feel uncertain about can leave you in a worse place with the wrong timing.

The fear of job hopping is overrated in tech. Especially if you are leaving Uber, it'd actually make you look more attractive for actually having a backbone and a conscience.

In a period of about 3 years I went through 4 jobs. I never once was asked or told that my job hopping was a concern in any interviews (probably 50 all together) or offers.

Interestingly the only time I got push back on my "job hopping" Was when I left my first job that I was at for 3 years. I was being interviewed by my potential manager and one of his reports. As the interview was wrapping up the report piped up "How do we know you aren't just going to leave us in 3 years?"

The manager took control and smoothed that question over and I didn't have to answer it but it was an obvious power play and I'm glad someone else was in the room.

This has happened before. Yahoo used to be a hot company to work for. Now, if you still work there, people wonder why you haven't left yet. It is definitely harder to get a job with Yahoo on your resume. Will the same thing happen to Uber? It's possible. You won't feel it until the feeling is very strong, which means it will be too late for you to move.

If you are concerned now, and can find a better offer that you are very comfortable with, I'd say jump ship.

Quitting Uber on principle might be ok, but don't quit because you're worried about being employable in the future. Loads of people will employ someone who is ex-Uber, despite the negative press. Largely, the negative association is with Uber management and execs, not its employees. I doubt you'd have trouble finding a job down the line. If you like your job, don't quit! If you feel guilt, just do what you can to try and shape the culture.

Im surprised this is a serious question. I'll cut you some slack because I realize that being a current employee at Uber must mean that every other conversation in your life has to do with your company's morals.

The most important thing to realize right now is that your caught up in a news cycle (albeit, a pretty bad one), but eventually the talks will quiet down and it will be a thing of the past (not saying that there aren't serious issues at Uber, but it won't get media coverage because people will be tired of it).

I agree with brandon272. No one has ever been disqualified from a job because their former employer was unpopular in the media (unless there is a major political statement that comes along with the employer i.e. marijuana advocacy, NRA, etc).

Stay on board, keep doing the best you can, and most importantly, don't get caught up in all the negative crap. Treat everyone else with respect and support your female coworkers if they need you.

I think you'd be crazy to leave a team you like unless you have something better. The "harm", if any, to your career for staying at Uber would be less than the harm for being a "job hopper" and leaving in less than a year or two.

If you don't like your job, then look around. Maybe look around just to know what the market is like. But don't leave something you enjoy purely because you're afraid of what others will think on your resume.

How much under a year? I've rarely stayed at the same company for more than 2 years, and haven't seen any objections to my job hopping. And if anyone asks you why you left Uber, then toxic culture or not really believing in the company's way of doing business, is an excellent reason.

But there are far more important reasons to stay or leave than fear for what others think. Do you like it there? Are you learning? Can you look at yourself in the mirror every morning for working there? If yes, then stay. If no, then leave.

Of course the smart thing to do is to first look for another job, and only then leave. That way you don't have to leave until you know it's safe to do so.

I think that being at two jobs in a row for under a year is a little concerning. I'd certainly ask questions about that in an interview.

That said, I think leaving Uber would be a significant advantage compared to other companies. In most cases you need to convince your interviewer that the previous company had poor culture without sounding bitter - but for Uber they will probably already know how bad the culture can be.

This is crazy. I use Uber all the time and I think it's a great company. (Of course, I don't approve of harassment/discrimination - but the people directly involved are now gone, and people really should just calm down.)

You shouldn't be worried about job hopping - you should be worried about your own judgement and conviction. Do you really believe that Uber is a bad place to work? And that the problems its facing cannot (or will not) be remediated? You say your team is not toxic (yet). Do you think it will be?

The same media that's slamming Uber today slammed every successful company... these armchair analysts, who haven't been through 0.01% of the struggles that entrepreneurs go through, predicted that Amazon, Netflix, Tesla, Uber will all go down. Now they're working overtime to paint Uber as a frat house with no ethics.

Every company has issues. Some even as severe as recent Uber events w.r.t harassment. But they fix it. They learn. They move on. Uber is not Travis, or the CTO, or the few people that came to limelight for bad culture. Uber is bigger than all of them.

Don't quit something because the press is saying bad things about it. Don't run away from problems. Fix them. That's what engineers do.

If you're not upper level management I don't think having Uber on your resume is gonna be a big black mark, unless it fits with an overall picture you give off of being an asshole. If you seem like a nice person otherwise, I think people will give you the benefit of the doubt, if you are just an engineer.

Ha. Silicon Valley can be really pathetic sometimes. As an employee, you should really go with whoever pays you more. If employees of another company want to shame you into accepting a lower wage why should you?

Silicon Valley is always talking about "changing the world" while building pointless apps that will only exist for 5 years at most as they try to sell to a bigger data mining company. All in the name of "being passionate about what you do".

Fuck that. Starting a for profit business is mostly always about making money, so as an employee you should try to get as much money as you can from them. If you start a company and really believe you are changing the world or making the world a better a place, then make it a non profit. Otherwise, get your head out of your ass.

Job hopping early on in your career to maximize your baseline salary won't affect your career. What may affect your career is the opportunity cost of picking the wrong company (esp Startups) if you had a choice, and the one you didn't pick takes off.

You are a techie, not on the executive board. So the Uber taint does not apply to you. As long as you are not required to implement some immoral program, there is no reason to leave as a matter of principle.

As a potential employer I would be more concerned about you changing jobs with less than a year at both previous jobs. Assuming you are not looking to take a pay cut, you would have to be stellar technically to even be considered with so little experience. Finally, I would consider you overly sensitive to outside influences and question whether you would stay with a new employer through thick and thin.

As a former MySpace employee I can confirm that being at an unpopular company is irrelevant. Employers are looking for increasing levels of responsibility, among other things. Do your best and you will be ok.

You can do some freelance or personal stuff too and then when you leave you only so your personal projects during your time at uber, if it is really better. Otherwise you can stay for a little longer and do a good harvest now that everybody is leaving.

Apparently, they have managed to recruit Zoubin Ghahramani [to lead their machine learning efforts] despite the recent mess. While this particular recruitment may not be representative of the broader reception of Uber employees in the job market, choosing to stay at Uber for _professional reasons_ does not seem to be a bad idea.

Lots of people at Theranos stood around and watched it burn, plenty stained their career by association. Forget the pay, what do you feel as a person about Uber (not just your team) but Uber the company? Feel good? stay, feel bad? listen to your gut and get out.

I don't know why you would let HN's opinion on the integrity of the companies leadership influence your decision to work there. The question seems preposterous to me. If you are happy with the work you are doing and the way your team conducts itself and you don't have a better offer on the table why leave? It's not like uber is building a nuclear bomb. Unless you are high up enough to influence any of the things that have come up in the bad press, why would anyone look down on you for working there?

Sure, a mass refactoring is going to cause a lot of pain to merge in, but you shouldn't be making massive pull requests in the first place. I don't think small refactoring here and there should be an issue. It's not like we've never dealt with merge conflicts before.

If your company is discouraging refactoring because it will cause merge conflicts, that's probably not a good sign of things to come.

It's an office politics issue. Here we have little issue with it, but I worked in a place that didn't like handling lots of "clean up" commits. The main issue is (working in embedded avionics systems) code changes have to be peer reviewed and qualified. So I've tried to make sure my changes are part of some new or existing PR. I can't do it willy-nilly or I'll be asked, "Why did foo.c:145-150 change?" If it's not part of a PR I can't justify it. So when I stumble on problems, I put them in JIRA. Even if the "problem" is: 200 lines of code without a single comment, all variables have names like XYZ12, XYZ13. It may technically work, but no one knows why and, fortunately, falls afoul of our coding guidelines. I may not be able to work it today, but it's in the system and can be worked at some point when priorities align better.

For a software team of a handful of people or more, nothing holds a candle to JIRA. It's a little intimidating to new users, and the setup time is ridiculous. I have one or two nitpicks about things like the unavailability of conditional logic in some aspects of workflows. But if you're responsible for _managing_ the project, nothing beats being able to use your issue database as an actual database. And JIRA can be configured to reflect anything from the loosest zero-overhead startuppy kanban process (basically a UI almost exactly like Trello) to the most rigid and calcified enterprise process - and anything in between.

For small backlogs and non-technical users, Trello can be effective, but mature software projects tend to accumulate thousands of open bugs and feature requests and things-we'd-like-to-do-better-someday-if-we-ever-have-the-time. Trello's cards aren't skimmable, and you can't sort and filter them by multiple dimensions the way I'd prefer. There's no way to group a bunch of cards into something like an epic. And I still haven't figured out in Trello how to assign a card to one person but have other people subscribe to updates on it. It's ok to be the engineer assigned work via Trello, but it's awful to be the project manager trying to manage a backlog in Trello.

Asana is good for personal to-dos and tiny projects, but it's awful if you need to track the status of an issue through multiple steps of a process. It's a nearly perfect platform for GTD lists. But GTD is not a system for communication among multiple people.

Finally, both Asana and Trello are missing unique, persistent, human-readable issue IDs that can be used to quickly refer to and pull up a specific item out of hundreds or thousands that may have similar keywords. It seems like a small thing, but is a huge deal dealer for me because it breaks communication.

As for Basecamp, which someone else mentioned, I find it effective for communicating about a project with clients, but not for tracking the internal status of a large number of tasks for some of the same reasons outlined above.

Started using Clubhouse a few months ago, and finding it way better for software projects than anything else we tried. We're a team of 10 people, and it works well for the developers and product manager.

In the past we've used Pivotal Tracker and Trello, but neither was a good fit. Also looked at Jira, but the interface had too much overhead (slow and required too many clicks to do anything).

We initially used PivotalTracker for managing our development teams, and Trello to get a high level overview of project status as well as for planning. We're currently working on building our own version of PivotalTracker using a fork of CM42 (https://github.com/Codeminer42/cm42-central) for internal use.

Tough choice because there's a clash of personal preference, and role preference. JIRA is great for dev management, but it's hostile to business/design folk, and even developers tend to prefer lightweight github issues. Was tired of fighting, so went and built a sync tool to combine/switch Trello, JIRA, Asana, GitHub, etc seamlessly. Maybe it can help https://unito.io

Visual Studio Team Services is a pretty all-in-one solution. The only thing I'd like it to have a vastly simpler non-technical view. Something like Trello, as a front-end. They try to do this but imo it's not very effective.

Our team uses LiquidPlanner but it requires a lot of training and workshops to start using it right. Devs within the team struggle with the initial learning curve so we integrated Bugzilla and it works really well. The biggest feature we rely on from LP is predictive estimate ranges. For teams relying on the software releases of other teams the managers of each can see different uncertainty estimates and plan accordingly.

I think what you mean is security researcher rather than security engineer.

The easiest thing you can do is e-mail all penetration testing companies who can find near (or far) from where you live and ask if they are looking for interns or graduates. Even if they don't advertise at the moment, there's a good chance you'll get a positive reply, because the demand is greater than the supply.

Most security companies have a research department which you'll be able to apply for, after you've joined (at least in the UK such departments require security clearance).

Also, having an OSCP or OSCE certificate will definitely get you an interview.

Go where the fish are-- start attending conferences. Often the organizers wil have a discount rate for students. Sometimes they'll offer free admission if you volunteer at reception booth for a few hours. Being there in-person makes a big impact, it's a signal you're serious.

If you want to do cryptography, it's probably easiest to get into it through an academic career. Please understand it's quite a small field where the amount of talkers largely exceeds contributors.Alternatively, start learning and contributing to open source crypto libraries and projects, you'll meet people who can help you.

It's funny you can't find application security job postings, most of the bread and butter work these days is web, mobile and penetration testing. Get into security consulting and you'll do this type of gigs till your fingers bleed.

I'd suggest you learn about security, there's plenty of good info and books to be found and try to apply it instead of talk about it.

The best advice I can give you is to join a Security CTF team (your college may or may not have one, but there are others that are open to all).

Internships and jobs will open up from being part of a CTF group. It's also A LOT of fun* (*opinion).

netsec might not necessarily be what you're looking for. A position as a Security Researcher is probably what you most fit into... finding the right recruiter can also help you out a lot.

Another (and honestly, easier to get into) security industry is the public sector. Intelligence agencies, military intelligence branches, etc. They'll hire you based on personality and potential, and will train you further. This (in my limited experience) usually means less pay.

Hi! I've been working on blockchain tech professionally since mid 2013, and been writing software since the 80s. I'm CTO of BigchainDB.

Here's how I see things. Blockchains are distributed databases (e.g. MongoDB) with three new characteristics: decentralized (no single entity owns or controls), immutable (tamper-resistant), and assets (you own the asset if you have the private key).

Each new characteristic of blockchain tech leads to business benefits. "Decentralized" helps organizations share resources; e.g. music labels sharing a database of who-wrote-what. "Immutable" gives better audit trails; e.g. to see history of ownership of art. "Assets" can now live on the data store itself, which enables decentralized exchanges and more.

You can use blockchain tech in your existing centralized stacks. E.g. it would run side-by-side with your instances of Postgres, MongoDB, etc. Typically the blockchain would incorporated as a database-as-a-service. This would make the stack partly-decentralized.

"Blockchain" is basically just the process of doing a long math problem with distributed computing and showing your work.

Bitcoin does not rely on new breakthroughs in any science. The thing that's revolutionary about it is the idea of a people's currency, not the technologies used. The technologies that make that possible are all quite old.

Bitcoin's "blockchain" is not even the most efficient way to solve a given problem. It is intentionally inefficient by a variable factor (difficulty) to provide economic stability.

After Bitcoin's rise, a lot of people in banking wanted to believe that there is some magic element of Bitcoin that makes it technologically better than what they offer, because that would mean they could use that technology to create their own Bitcoin. But there isn't. People use it precisely because it allows them to store and exchange wealth outside of banks and nation states. The tech is irrelevant.

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are quite amazing. Whether they are the "end game" for their technologies has yet to be seen. But we are only beginning to see the applications of this technology. Bitcoin was more or less the first to practically solve the double spend problem, but depends on independent mining to make that work.

I suppose if a blockchain were secured - that is the nodes were all trusted and there was no way for a third party to interject into the blockchain - it could be very useful for solving conflict of interest problems. I believe it is being used for situations similar to "letters of credit" already, and that's a good application scenario.

I haven't been involved with any non-bitcoin blockchain implementations, so I'm not familiar with the specific issues companies face. But I know both Microsoft and IBM have blockchains-as-a-service and I imagine somebody is working on it. I'd love to hear of their experience.

You might have a fair use argument in that you're combining multiple data sources into something novel. Similar to how video compilations can be fair use. But IANAL and I don't know if that's been tested in court.

The owners of the sites, not the internet, can provide permission. If it is a question of not wanting to do something illegal but paying for legal advice does not make economic sense, then that's a sign that the larger project may not make economic sense. If there is no legal advice up front and the project turns out to create legal liability and be uneconomic, there is a non-trivial chance that you may wind up paying for legal advice down the road for a project that does not cover the cost.

As a general rule of thumb (UK, specifically) asking for implicit permission will either get a standard no or no response at all.

However, if the information is reasonably accurate and links back to the merchant's site it is very unlikely they will complain, especially if the links are 'follow' and not affiliated (not that it would make much difference anyway).

Roughly once a month we meet and we start a brief round table where whoever propose project he would like to work during the day, then we pair up and each pair (or triplets) works together at whichever project they have decided.

After lunch and before to leave we communicate to the other the "successes" of the day which can be either commits, PR, learn a new thing or just had fun with friends.

Goal of the day is to contribute to open source, sometimes we succeed done other times we just have fun and learn new things.

Hey what are your specific skillset and how long have you been coding, I'm willing to pair with someone and work on something if it's interesting enough. I work on side projects in my free time and I work full time as a front-end engineer used to be full-stack.

This may be more noticeable to me, because Facebook on my phone is one of the few places I haven't blocked ads. I don't block them out of spite; I block them because, 1) They completely distract me, when they move and make noise; 2) I've yet to encounter an ad network I trust.

I simply don't do much secure stuff on my phone, and I use a separate email account on it that's not tied to anything significant.

Facebook on my phone is also eerie in presenting content and ads that relate to what I've recently been doing. If they aren't outright monitoring my conversations, they are damned good at determining my location (while my GPS is turned off) and making remarkable inferences as to what the topics at hand likely were.

If it weren't the default means my wide-ranging friends use to keep in touch, I'd by having a serious conversation with myself today as to whether it was time to uninstall it. I'm still debating; just don't want to fall out of touch with those friends.

P.S. As has been mentioned here frequently, FB maintains shadow profiles for people who don't have Facebook accounts.

Facebook is becoming a primary connection / cross-reference between market activity (e.g. shopping) and personal data (not just ZIP, age, etc. demographics, but likes and activities, and that all-important social network).

Adding annotations to charts is critical for most of the stakeholders I've had and is extremely manual and a nightmare on dashboards - I don't think any tool solves this out of the box excellently. (i.e. allow users to easily annotate features of a chart)

Specifically on the OKRs - the objectives themselves should be inspirational. What is the end state that you're trying to achieve? The underlying key results is what will be measured, so that's where I'd drop any project-oriented activity.

It's very important that OKRs should not conflated with performance reviews. These are goals that the team sets for itself and is accountable to itself for. If you stray there, you'll end up with bad goals and lots of sandbagging. If the two is separated, it becomes very easy to understand another key principle - that you should set about 70% completion as the goal. Targeting 100% completion leads to easy, overestimated goals - it's nice to allow for and encourage extra effort without penalizing the team for directional changes. And speaking of business priority changes - change your KRs, why not? Objectives should in theory be higher level and not be randomized over a duration of one quarter (otherwise you have bigger issues), but in practice it can of course happen and again - so you don't hit an objective. As long as all are aware of the reasons, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Get together as a team and discuss openly what your next quarter's (or whatever) goals should be. I personally find more value in that conversation than in the resulting objectives/KRs. They are important to write down and revisit progress regularly, but that initial directional alignment is key IMO.

Hi,what I do is set 1 soft skill (from a soft skill evaluation package), 1 project based (which usually do change) and then say 3 tech improvement skills or investigations into new techs (which may or may not pay off).

>No, this would be more like life coaching, but I don't want to call it that. There's too much voodoo in that market, too many "weird tricks." This would be honest, patient, professional listeningno shortcuts, just kindness.

I created a bot a while back based on phantom.js a headless browser. Mostly I wanted to see if upvotes could be scripted and I wanted to play with phantom.js. It seems that the system is based on 1 vote per public IP. It's possible to use many instances of DO/GCloud/AWS.

I would suggest that there are probably a few vote brigade bots out there. I think the most common bot would be a story cross poster, which takes top-stories from places like lobste.rs et. al. and posts them to HN to build reputation.

I think the hacker/coding/programming element of this site makes the rest of the discussion whether on business management or leadership all the more interesting. If you are a hacker and also interested in business it's hard to find a replacement. There are plenty of business sites / magazines without technical people on them of course.

It depends upon the context. I'm inclinded to say yes because I see my 22 year old coworkers buy eth on margin. Usually when new investors are buying on margin its a sign that there's a bubble forming or it may even be hitting its bubble peak soon. But I could be wrong I haven't watched the news on it so I'm not aware of the context of the rise in value.

I also think, most people who tried to explain it didn't do good job either.

The most frequent explanation you would hear is that Ethereum is a Turing complete world computer that can do anything.

But in my opinion, the above sentence is misleading marketing.

You would also hear statement like "Ethereum is a blockchain that runs code". Well a blockchain is a datastructure, like a linked list. A datastructure only stores data, a datastructure doesn't run code.

If you look closer (correct me if I'm wrong), each program has to be executed by every single machine in the network to get cross verified. So the computation power of Ethereum is not the combination of all computers in the network, like you would imagine of a "world computer".

Also, the program has to be deterministic. This means it can't have random number, can't read data from outside APIs. I don't think being Turing complete is that useful.

It seems that way. It isn't new money entering the market, as chart data across Poloniex, BFX and BTC-E shows the biggest inflow is BTC/ETH. It's just the same old speculators getting in on the rush of a cheap alt-coin with better technological potential thats riding on some good news about its partnerships. It's a bubble, but who knows where the top is.

Google was a great example of what it means to focus on what you're good at. Trying to be something you're not and have no business doing will result in embarrassment and failure, as seen with Google Plus. Facebook is good at social networking. Google is good at search and development.

Google actually helped me to understand this important point: You and I will never ever create another Facebook. Sure, we can create smaller community-like platforms, but there is no reason for us to believe that we can be greater and better than Facebook. And we don't have to be. There is no sense in pretending. There's not even a sense in trying. Therefore, find smaller projects to work on, and specialize in them. There are a great many things that Facebook cannot and should not do. There are a many great things that you and I cannot and should not do. But then, there are also a great many things that we can do!

Before this, I used to get upset and it probably prevented me from even wanting to start projects or come up with ideas. I was always thinking big: "How do I create something like the next Facebook." Once I set this mindset aside and focused on the smaller picture of just developing useful apps, and getting them out into the world, it made things better.

I had finally realized I was completely focused on the wrong thing. There are many things that Facebook is not good at and there are things Facebook is good at. There are many things Facebook cannot do simply because they are not in the business to do it. There are things that Facebook also implemented into their platform that just doesn't get as much use or attention as it should. Those little flaws in the system are the things the "little developers" can take over and specialize in.

I created https://mypost.io which is an easy-to-use platform that lets you put up a webpage on the Internet in seconds. I posted it on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552168) and it got absolutely no attention at all. And other than telling Twitter and a few Facebook friends about it, it has had no advertising or media attention. Yet somehow, the entire world is using it. By "the entire world", I mean people from around the world. Not thousands of people, but a few hundred at least. I've seen people from Russia, Brazil, Australia, Germany, and Japan using it. How did it get around the world within a year? To date, there have been over 2,500 posts created. Might not sound like a lot, but I'm not Facebook and I didn't spend any money advertising it. I could have spent more money and time advertising it, but it was just a fun platform that helped me understand what people like and whether my applications were useful or not. I mean, I really just created it for myself, as I do all my web apps. I simply share it with others and if they enjoy using it and find a use for it as well, than that is a success to me.

Lesson learned: Stop developing apps for other people. Develop them for yourself and make it user-friendly in the process. If you find it useful, it is more than likely that others will find it useful as well. Either keep it free or figure out how to monetize it and make a little money for your efforts. That is what I am in the process of testing and learning now: How much will people pay for something they find useful?

Beautifully designed and informative landing page! Makes me want to find a reason to use the product :)

Since you seem to live in the Bay Area, have you tried reaching out to some people in the industry you admire? Also, you must have some existing network, maybe some folks who work in large tech companies with experienced managers, or friends who run startups and have advisors/investors. Why not ask for referral and introductions there?

Vet advisors and potential investors like you would any new hire. Understand their unique background and why they would be valuable to your startup, and then communicate that to them in your initial conversation. Let people know why you want them as your advisor. Wouldn't hurt to throw them some upside, or ask them to invest if you are raising capital :)

Also, always get a second opinion on any advice. A lot of the time, you will get conflicting wisdom and you have to ultimately decide what's right for your company.

What can you build / do in 10 days? Mention that timeline when you submit 10 days from now.

To expand: The problem with paper prototypes are that they're easy, because anyone can do them you're inherently not separating yourself from the pack. But getting in or not getting into YC doesn't mean it's not a good idea. It's just that very few accelerators today take in a company at the paper prototype stage [not because the idea is bad but because too many other competing ideas are way further along and have proven more about their assumptions].

Why not apply and find out? I mean, 'YC probably will not accept the company' as a reason for not applying is available to everyone because most companies will not be accepted.

More specifically, based on Graham's essay, [1] there's not a correct formula for getting into YC and the application process is not a test that a person can study for (though preparation probably is a good idea).

It's a pretty big area and there's plenty of open source projects in this space (and a decent crowd of people working on linux audio development).I'd say a great way to learn a new domain is to help out existing open source projects (though I'm biased towards that as that's how I learned).

Let me know what you're specifically looking for (via a few examples if possible) and I might be able to direct you to some resources.

- Simply use sheets of paper with a pencil, draw the mockups & pin on a board for the whole team to see, this makes it easier to change stuff. I find digital mockup tools slow.

- If you need High fidelity design, get a designer to spin this up, if you attempt to use your poor photoshop skills, you are likely going to slow things down.

Development/Implementation/tooling

- Uses SASS + PostCSS + SMACSS, this cannot be overemphasised why? At first, it may take some time to set up but will save you tonnes of hours later. SASS enables you write modular CSS, nesting will save your life and PostCSS will help you with messy cross-browser stuff like vendor-prefixes. Modular css will help you iterate faster because it's clear where to find what. _header.scss, _sidebar.scss you get the point.

- Use a CSS grid framework, don't waste time writing yours, even so, extract bootstrap's plug it in and use.

- For form elements and typography use a CSS framework and if you need anything custom modify as you go along, note you should have a file e.g _modified_btn.scss where these customizations will live so you don't go crazy in the future trying to find it.

- Set up hot-reload somehow, with React this is easy. It will save you stress hitting `ctrl + R` 1000 times.

- Use IDE/Editor plugins that automatically prettify your code personally, I code with Sublime Text 3 so I use HTMLPrettifier and set `format_on_save: true` you don't want to waste time hitting tabs.

I have had one experience with Upwork and it was as a freelancer. It was bad. I ended up not being able to do the work because of health issues but the guy wanted to skirt the upwork rules in order to not have to pay through there. It would've worked in my favor but it was just shady.